Hey You Guys Remember When Ronald Reagan Killed The Leader of Portugal?
In the United States, there has long been tensions between the American Left, ascendant since the election of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, and the Roman Catholic Church. While the two were originally allies, as Catholics were a major part of the "New Deal Coalition", after Roosevelt's death in 1945, the left wing of the Democratic Party was led by two people, President Henry Wallace and former First Lady Elanor Roosevelt. In the post-war world, both opposed the regimes of Portugal and Spain, which they saw as "reactionary theocracies”, along with the big city Catholic political machines they stood against as “reform Democrats”.
While these tensions were often kept just to the personal writings of Wallace and Roosevelt, they hit a breaking point in the latter point of the Wallace administration, when Wallace, fearing a conflict with the Soviet Union and wanting to promote world peace, hammered out a deal with Soviet premier Beria, uniting Germany in a trade for millions of dollars of American aid. The result was anger from many European states, who saw the deal as “appeasing” the Soviets, and who also feared a newly united German state, and it inevitably led to the formation of the Entente between France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Belgian South Africa, and Spain. The Entente’s presence in many African wars of independence angered the left even more, especially due to the formation of the
“United Front”, a collection of former German and Italian soldiers to be used in colonial wars, allegedly backed by the Vatican and Spain.
As America had vanquished its biggest rival on the world stage, with the Soviet Union losing much of its neo-imperial status due to Beria's promotion of autonomy and dislike of conflict, creating a "fortress Soviet" policy, they soon entered an era of domination with its progressive left-wing government, which was resented by the Entente. Europeans saw the United States, and its allies, the Nordic League, China, and occasionally the Soviet Union as interfering in their "business" in Africa, in particular in Iberia, which saw two of the weaker empires in Europe terrified of losing power.
Under the administration of Ronald Reagan, the former Democratic governor of California and a Hollywood actor, America faced much mockery, as Europeans saw the actor-turned-left-wing demagogue as a symbol of America’s “cowboy diplomacy”. However, his term coincided with the fall of the Portuguese regime, as the Portuguese underground grew to an extreme extent after Antonio Salazar’s death, and the the United States grew to support leader Francisco Pereira de Moura. This hit a breaking point in 1971, when revolutionaries in Portugal, backed by American intelligence, stormed the capitol, killing the new leader of the nation, Antonio Spinola. The result was a full breakdown of US-Entente relations, creating a "Cold War" between the US and Europe, that would last for 30 years...
Presidents of the United States:
Henry Wallace (Democratic) 1945-1953
1948 def. (with Wilson Wyatt) Robert Taft (Republican), Benjamin Laney (State's Rights)
Wilson Wyatt (Democratic) 1953-1957
1952 def. (with Paul Denver) Thomas Dewey (Republican), Strom Thurmond (State's Rights)
Harold Stassen (Republican) 1957-1965
1956 def. (with James Mitchell) William Wyatt (Democratic), Strom Thurmond (State's Rights), Ezra T. Benson (John Birch)
1960 def. [second round] (with James Mitchell) Robert Nathan (Democratic)
Ronald Reagan (Democratic) 1965-1973
1964 def. [second round] (with Walter Reuther) Quentin Burdick (Pioneer)
1968 def. [second round] (with Walter Reuther) William Momyer (John Birch)